And, now –finally– it sounds like everything went okay (thank goodness!) —and that she’s already sad about the impending end of the school year.

Maybe Grandma was sort of like me. Sometimes I think that I worry about things to motivate myself to quit procrastinating and properly prepare for an upcoming event. It probably was the same with Grandma and her studies.

Besse

Besse was Grandma’s older married sister. This mention of Besse is so matter of fact. I wish that it conveyed a little more about Besse’s emotional state. This is the first time that Besse has been mentioned in the diary since the death of her newborn child in early April. Hopefully she was doing all right.

It’s been years since I was a student, but this series of entries evokes memories of how I felt during finals. And, I think that my children have similar feelings now. I guess some things don’t change over time. Students worry about exams!

Now hopefully your grandma can enjoy her summer vacation and forget about her worries for a little while, at least. What a long school year with the death of her sister’s baby and her little brother down with whooping cough…

Hello

I look forward to sharing my grandmother's diary with relatives and friends. Helena Muffly (Swartz) kept a diary from 1911-1914. She was 15 years old when she began this diary. I plan to post these entries one day at a time—exactly 100 years after she wrote them. I hope you enjoy this glimpse back to a slower paced time.

The header is a picture of the farm where my grandmother lived when she wrote this diary. It is located in Northumberland County in central Pennsyvlania about a mile outside of McEwenvsille. My father said that the buildings look similar to what they looked like when he was a child.